


Hades Pleads

by Nyresnuger



Series: The Very Last Day [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Getting Together, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, SEP era, young dangerous overambitious r76 anyone?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28860144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyresnuger/pseuds/Nyresnuger
Summary: And there in the dark it finally clicks. The thing he keeps spotting like a smudging of blood in Jack’s face when he trains, when he runs, when he sits alone quietly with his bright eyes fixed on something. The strange, not-aggression that flares whenever he speaks about why he’s here, why he fights.Jack is hungry.-------Something short and bright about a first meeting and all the meetings after that
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Series: The Very Last Day [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2116392
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	Hades Pleads

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, a huge apology for my recent inactivity. I hope I've gotten some mojo back - I'm certainly not done with this fandom at least
> 
> This is in many ways just a piece to work through a lot of the very specific headcanons I have about Soldier and the whole R76 dynamic; a perhaps darker, more explosive take on them than I usually write. It was incredibly fun to write and I hope y'all vibe with it too!
> 
> It is very much inspired by the song [Hades Pleads by Parker Millsap](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8QAaoSDdGE&ab_channel=ParkerMillsap-Topic); not really in theme or what actually happens, but I hope the energy feels the same. This fic is hopefully the first of 11 r76 fics inspired by the entire 'The Very Last Day'-album, one for each song. I know it's an ambitious project but I can't wait! This is their album I'm sure of it - listening to it while reading is much recommended
> 
> And with that, I think that's enough rambling. Thank you so much for reading!

_I’m gonna crown you as the Queen og the Dead_

_Gold-capped teeth in a ring on your head_

——  
  
The room is spartan. Gabriel never had much of an eye for interior decorating anyway, and it’s not like he’s had much time to truly make it homey.

He still surveys his surroundings carefully, taking in every inch, scanning for any personal details his few belongings might let slip. He ends up stuffing a picture of his friends back home down into a drawer, carefully hidden under a stack of paper.

He’s been lucky enough to dodge a roommate up until this point. When he first got dropped off at the SEP facility, the relative luxury of everything baffled him. The idea of sharing a room with only one or two people foreign to him after the first emerging waves of the omnic crisis. 

But now, after just two months of being lucky enough to land a double room but no assigned roommate, he’s grown protective of his space. A tad worried he’s grown soft in his solitude too; worried he’s let too much of what he otherwise keeps close to his chest spill over into his living space.

They only told him somebody would join him this morning. Jonathan F. Morrison. As nondescript a name as they come and Gabe is already bracing for the worst. Some brash military kid ( _like you have any right to talk_ , his sister teases in his head. _You started growing a proper beard last summer._ He waves it off, the timeline of his life feels broken up and stretched - a sharp divide, a chasm of time, suddenly breaking it to the tune of gears clicking and guns firing _)_ who thinks he can do whatever he wants because the military wanted him as a lab rat.

It scares him, how bright and eager the new people are. How apparent it is they haven’t felt the desperation in rolling the treatment out so quickly.

It makes him want to guard himself off, reveal nothing and learn only just enough to know where he has the guy even more furiously. 

When he hears the knock on the door, he surveys the room one last time, and forces any doubt it’s not sterile enough far down. He wills himself to relax before the door swings open.

The first time Gabriel sees him, Jonathan is biting the inside of his cheek. He’s bleeding too, but it doesn’t seem like he’s even registered that himself yet, so Gabe doesn’t pay it too much attention.

“Reyes?” his eyes dart slightly. Gabe can’t hold back the slight quirk of his lip. He’s so obviously fighting against the small, nervous movements. The way his fingers tighten around the strap of his bag, feet shifting against the floor.

It’s all the trained precision of a soldier without the underlying confidence. At least his eyes - strikingly blue and alert - meet Gabe’s without hesitation and don't waver once they’ve found their holding place.

“Then you must be Morrison.” It’s not a question. Jonathan nods, fingers tapping absentmindedly. 

“Yes, call me Jack.” 

Gabe lets out a short chuckle, subtle but accompanied by a much less subtle look-over. 

It’s instinct at this point, to poke and prod at anyone who dares come close, to try and bait out more than Jack is willing to give. There’s jackpot instantly. The line of Jack’s shoulders rise and Gabe steels himself for something - any subtle reaction, an outright confrontation. But Jack doesn’t say anything, even if his jaw tightens just enough for Gabe to notice. For a second they’re suspended in vibrating silence, eyes locked, Jack’s open and blue and concentrated, Gabe meeting them guarded and awaiting. There’s a sting of _something_ , the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. 

Then Jack moves, shuffles on his feet, his eyes wavering for a split second. Gabe graciously steps aside to allow him into the room they are to share, unwavering focus dialed in on every movement Jack makes. 

He waits until they’re right beside each other in the door to tilt his head to the side and ask. “What happened to your face?”

Jack stops, turns towards him with a slight crinkle of his brow, a hand already rising to check what he’s talking about. Once again, Gabriel can’t hold back the smile, wherever this kid came from they did a poor job teaching him to be stoic.

Jack stares down at his palm as it comes back from his cheek bloodied.

“What the fuck.” He’s dropping his bag right onto the floor. Gabe grins, moves around him like a cat. “What the hell are they pumping into us?” he kicks into motion again to start tracing the small stream of blood back to his right ear, swears under his breath and digs around in his pockets after some kind of handkerchief.

Gabriel sits down on his own bed effortlessly, leaning back to take him in fully. “They treated you already.”

Jack turns to him, still swearing slightly. “Huh? Yeah. First thing when I got here.” His face cracks in a smile equal parts boyishly excited and wickedly proud. “Guess they need legal ground to shoot me if I decide to run.”

Gabe’s heart sinks slightly. He snorts, shifting to lean forward and forcing the slight grin through.“Running off with the super juice sure is a serious affront.”

Jack grunts at that. Something like a short, cut off laugh vibrating through his chest. The bleeding from his ear seems to have stopped, even as a slight stain over the side of his jaw remains.

“That’s one way to put it.” 

Gabe smiles back, sharp and measured when Jack looks at him. Again, he’s hit with the stark brightness of his eyes. Pale like winter tides, cold sunshine reflected in shallow pools of rain on the road.

He shifts slightly on the bed. The silence stretches but never breaks into uncomfortable. Jack turns and starts unpacking his stuff. There isn’t a lot of it. At least he, like most of the people here, hadn’t dared to think this would be a life of comfort. Most had the sense to leave everything irreplaceable back home, in case they weren't going back.

Gabe breathes through his nose. His eyes follow the line of Jack’s shoulders, the careful precision he moves with. His eyes narrow, calculating as they take Jack in. “Why did you join?”

Jack’s shoulders straighten, harden somehow. Gabe can’t hold the smirk back, he tries so hard to keep his cards close and yet the way he moves betrays so much. There’s a slight falter to his movements. He turns slowly to face Gabe, slinging his arms across his chest. Feigned nonchalance.

Only the slightest shrug accompanies his answer. His eyes are steady even as his teeth start working over the inside of his cheek. “I had to.”

His chin tilts up. Gabe’s eyes trail the line of his throat.

Proud. Proud and determined. A man who believes his own hype as much as he fears he won’t be able to do enough. 

Gabe sighs. He’s leaning back on his hands. He’s not sure if the little smile that cracks over his face reads as bittersweet as it feels. “Didn’t we all.”

Jack is still halfway turned away. His back is broad with new muscle, he moves with the uncertainty of somebody who didn’t become properly strong until recently. He thinks Gabe can’t see the small glances he’s casting back on him. Like this life doesn’t teach them to be alert.

Jack huffs, a somehow dismissive sound. His head shakes slightly as he goes back to unpacking, hands slower than they could be. 

Gabe’s not exactly sure what to feel about this.

\----

Their days blur, a cacophony of aching muscles and noise like a wave; forks clicking metallically in the cafeteria and somebody spinning tales, the rasp of a commander Gabe’s halfway between resenting and respecting, an errant bird outside their window. At all times to news rushing in either through screens or hushed whispers and rumours.

Gabe has never been social, not by a lot of people’s measurement at least, but on the third day he has to invite Jack to come sit with him and his small group of friends. 

It doesn’t come naturally to him, and at first he handwaves it away as just another excuse to try and figure him out. He wants to know what makes Jack tick, wants a clearer layout of all his buttons so he’ll be able to press them if the need arises.

Something isn’t clicking. Jack seems to excel in most fields and yet that awkwardness lingers in the way he moves. There’s something new to him, like every move is a test but Gabe doesn’t sense insecurity on him.

In conversation, he’s as charmingly awkward as he looks. Polite and quick to laugh, sometimes a shade of something boyish and young crosses his face and Gabe isn’t sure what to do with it. Not when it’s suddenly overrun by something he recognizes from himself.

After a week he’s sure of it, there’s steel beneath all Jack’s farmboy-ish charm. And it’s sharp. He doesn’t lead with it, but it glitters through sometimes.

There are times where everything about him _sings_ with it _._ It mostly happens when he gets to go all out in hand to hand combat; everything about him suddenly sharpening into fine points, the still awkward slant of his shoulders suddenly making sense. Like he grows two inches under all that _want_.

Gabe tackles Turner to the mats and pins her there and then he’ll catch Jack’s eyes across the training hall and they’ll burn when he plants a foot solidly in Wilkilson’s chest to send him flying back. It’s not malice, not aggression, Gabe has seen plenty of that in his day. This is something else.

The first time it’s enough to make him sloppy, Turner writhes beneath him, suddenly rises in a burst of movement until the back of her head collides directly with Gabe’s nose. He sputters and rolls back, on his feet and back in the moment before she can follow up the move with some more. He sees her move through tears from the impact and decides halfway through the blur to simply brace for impact. 

They go down in a tangle of limbs. She’s laughing before she even has his arms pinned to each side of his body and he good-naturedly lets her. Not that there’s much else he could do.

“You’ve gone soft.” She grins, sits up and whips her long braid back over her shoulder.

“I let you win,” he glares, sits up when she lets him.

“That, or distracted,” she continues like he never spoke and he hates the knowing quirk of her lip. 

He huffs and doesn’t answer. The first bright red drops have started dripping down over his lip from his nose. 

She gets up and offers him a hand just as the sharp thump of Wilkinson falling backwards on his ass echoes through the hall. Gabe’s eyes snap to them. Jack is breathing hard, chest rising and falling triumphantly, hair mussed up with sweat.

He’s looking right down at Wilkinson, he’s saying something that makes Jack tilt his chin up and grin before he helps the man up. And then he steals a glance to the side and his eyes meet Gabe’s. 

He grins and it’s sharp and cocky in the very best way. Gabriel wipes the blood of his lip and Jack’s eyes dart down to follow the movement. The eye contact zings like something electric when he looks back up. 

Turner pats Gabe on the back and he shakes her hand off with a barked insult he barely even comprehends himself. 

\----

Jack comes back late. The time they’re expected to be in bed, lights out and rooms quiet, is strict, but he’s already learned how to hit the curfew exactly.

Gabe looks up over the book he’s reading when he enters. He’s been outside. Autumn is setting in, the air that clings to him is cold and stingy, fresh and clear. His cheeks are red both from the cold and the exertion from his run.

“Hey.” 

Gabe acknowledges him with a short nod. Jack shrugs off his jacket, kicks his boots into the corner. 

“It’s beautiful out there.” The bed creaks when Jack sits down heavily, lays back still dressed and starts trying to untangle his dog tags from the zipper of his hoodie. “There are so, _so many_ stars out here.”

Gabe observes him through the corner of his eye. He’s pretty sure Jack notices, but he doesn’t look over to confront Gabe with it. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t even hum a low, distantly affirming sound. There’s something loose and open about Jack when he comes back from these late-night jogs. Like he’s less guarded after he’s been alone out there in the cold, trying to outrun whatever it is that still clings to his skin from a nameless before.

Sometimes Gabe thinks he might be running towards something too.

“I was quicker this time too.” Jack sits up. He’s grinning that small, sharp, self-satisfied grin of his. That’s another thing that changes when he’s been out running. He talks more. “A lot quicker.”

His eyes are locked on Gabe, he can sense it even if he’s still pretending to read. The seconds tick by. He looks down, imagines doing calculations in the spaces between words on the page. He’s not sure what conclusion he reaches, but he does it anyway. He sighs, places the book facedown on his chest.

“You’re fucking weird, Morrison.” it doesn’t sound like an insult, it isn’t, really. And Jack hears it perfectly like the question it’s hiding.

He huffs, something like a laugh. His eyes shine, more grey than blue in this light. 

“Don’t you think we ought to try? Get better and all that?”

The sincerity strikes like lightning between Gabe’s ribs. The _yes_ that resonates somewhere close to the left side of his chest is loud and clear, the incessant need to care. But he looks at Jack’s face - honest and open and determined in a strange, uncertain way - and all he sees is cracks for the world to open up. God knows there’s formed bullet holes in better things than young, idealistic soldiers these last couple years. To openly hope feels too much like making yourself a target.

“Perhaps.” His voice doesn’t waiver, and yet he feels uncomfortably seen. 

Jack drinks him in, finally peels the sweatshirt off. The line of his torso has already changed since he arrived - stronger still, but with a runner’s litheness. 

His hands seem strong and sure when he starts kneading at his left bicep, his chin tilts up with a defiant confidence Gabe isn’t entirely sure he feels all the way to his core. “With all due respect, Reyes, I’m going to save the world.”

Gabe can’t hold back the short, sharp chuckle that escapes him. Jack looks at him and it’s only the faintest hint of a smile that dances in his eyes, but it’s there and Gabe is pretty sure he looks the same.

Jack breaks the eye contact with a small huff, like they’re sharing some secret for just the two of them. There’s a fine dusting of red high on his cheekbones and the tips of his ears.

“Goodnight.” He clicks the light off and Gabe hears him shimmy out of his pants in the soft, blue darkness. Gabe stares at the ceiling, for some reason hesitant to look over even if he knows he’ll only see the vague outline of Jack turning onto his side to sleep.

And there in the dark it finally clicks. The thing he keeps spotting like a smudging of blood in Jack’s face when he trains, when he runs, when he sits alone quietly with his bright eyes fixed on _something._ The strange, not-aggression that flares whenever he speaks about why he’s here, why he fights.

Jack is hungry.

\----

They’re deployed for the first time not long after that. It’s nothing grand and even if no one says it out loud Gabe recognizes it for what it is; a test run.

He’d known intellectually there’s power in him now but it’s something else to experience it viscerally. 

The snow is thick around the target, but the sky is blue. The pines are tall and dark even in the bright sunlight. The cold doesn’t seem to touch him, not like he remembers it stinging back before. He feels the phantom aches of exhaustion only when they get visual on the target. It looks like a simple wooden hut; an outpost of some climate-science observation so far north in Alaska no one apparently noticed when the last of the human residents started meddling in omnic construction.

It doesn’t look like the kind of place that produces sentient weapons of mass destruction but Gabe has learned that assuming the best is a luxury they can’t afford anymore. 

“No visual confirmation,” Jack’s voice is a scratchy drawl in his ear. Gabe’s eyes flicker to the approximate position he knows Jack must be approaching the building from. 

“Nothing here either,” comes Turner’s low reply.

“I don’t see nothing either,” he mumbles back.

The snow cracks drily when he starts approaching. Even after all this time, all this destruction, it’s still eerie to move in on omnics. There’s not a trace of smoke hanging above the chimney, no footprints, no disturbance. All the normal traces of life he’d single in on and become _sure_ from detecting. There’s just the snow, white and perfect and the sky like a polished helmet, stark and blue, above them.

His heartbeat drowns out the crunch of his footsteps. 

“On my signal.” Turner’s voice is sharp with focus. Gabe nods even as he knows no one but their backup, hiding almost half a mile away, might see him and they wouldn’t catch that subtle of a movement.

“Now.” Her voice, like a knife. And then he’s moving. He doesn’t even feel the sad remains of a splintered window when he leaps through, heavy boots skidding on the dusty floor. 

It’s as starkly eerie as all rogue omnic activity is. No real sentience, just the softly pulsing body of the original omnic, a crude, splintered thing with one dull orange eye resting against the far wall. And then all it’s strange, deformed creations. Like this call, the _thing_ that caused the first omnium to go nuclear, like it calls for them to multiply - desperately and sickly, a virus of spread.

Tendrils of wire and jagged metal writhing in fractals frozen somewhere between stilted manmade and organic. 

The whole mass hums with unintelligible malice, a low whirring like a predator growling. The dul, rhythmic _twhump_ s echoes from within it, the strangled tune of it’s reproduction. He doesn’t have time to take it all in before a towering, ragged piece of the machinery detaches and launches at him with all the cold, distanced malice of a lion - single minded, instinctual intent to kill.

He skitters backwards, the wall is at his back, shards of glass splintered beneath his boots. He knows it’s only rigid training and discipline that makes his hands move to follow the commands Turner barks out. He barely comprehends her, just takes aim and fires the pulsing, blue projectile into the glowing eye of the leaping omnic.

It hisses and misses him narrowly. The sound of it hitting the floor is a high, shrill thing. The rest of the omnic - he doesn’t even know if it’s one hideous thing or many - are alive and moving too; a rigid tendril tries getting a hold around his ankle before he can shake it off, kick it against the floor in a sputter of metal.

The big, detached omnic turns to him again. The parts in it’s huge, singular eye turn with a low clatter, focusses in on him. There’s a cut across it’s plated front from where his bullet struck. When it rasps again in some approximation of animalistic hurt, he lets the second bullet fly.

The whole hut seems to shake. He only senses the shadow of Turner and Jack moving out of the corner of his eye. The omnic in front of him is single mindedly focussed on him. It shakes and sputters, convulses like something organic dying.

It staggers for just a second too long.

The butt of Jack’s rifle comes crashing through the casing of the thing. Sparks fly immediately, fireworks going off as the gears just under the shell work desperately against the intrusion. The weapon itself curls up like a child’s toy from the impact.

Jack swears, something high and scratchy. The omnic answers with it’s own strangled moan. It struggles forward. Gabe has his gun hoisted up and pointing down at the thing, he feels like steel in the face of it. He never has to pull the trigger

The world opens up again with the immediate threat eliminated. He takes in the whole scene - the big pile in the corner pulses no more, the orange eye looks like Turner’s emptied both her own and Jack’s weapons into it. He guesses that explains Jack’s choice of attack strategy.

“Holy shit.” Jack is looking down on his own hands, the sound that bubbles up from his chest is almost a chuckle. “I did not mean to do that.”

Gabe lifts an eyebrow. “Well, you didn’t have to, it was already looking pretty bad.”

Jack looks at him, glances at him out the corner of his eyes. “Oh I don’t doubt you had it under control.” His gaze falls to his hands again, like they’re new to him. One hand moves slowly over the forearm of the other. “I didn’t mean to do _that_.” 

When he looks up at Gabe he’s bruning with that hunger, every line of the grin is filled with it. Overflowing. ‘

Gabe lets his eyes linger on the gun lodged in the omnic, curled up and destroyed. He can’t help but grin back at Jack.

_I’m going to save the world._

\----

Their trainers and commanders are all very satisfied with their results. They’re not the first soldiers with _whatever it is they inject in them_ running in their blood who’ve been put out there, but they’re the first to have trekked that long.

Gabe waits for one day, two, three but the exhaustion never settles in. He doubts he’s as strong as Jack is, but the thought of how much he’d have to do, how far he’d go before the tiredness would kick in both exhilarates and scares him. 

“It’s working.” Jack isn’t looking at him. He’s looking directly up from where he’s laying on his bed. Gabe looks over anyway, takes in the line off his profile in the dim light. It’s a new feeling for him, but he wants to openly ask when and how Jack broke his nose (two times, if he isn’t much mistaken). Neither of them talk much and he doubts Jack is as diligent about collecting information as he’s always been, but he wants to know. And worse than that, he wants to _see_ and learn, just for the sake of it. It’s dangerous, it feels too much like wanting to be seen.

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t have to ask for clarification about _what’_ s working. The breath he lets out when he puts his book down to roll onto his back is almost a sigh. He imagines how their sightlines must cross, inevitably, somewhere far far up there. Or maybe they’re perfectly aligned; parallels into the stars, never straying or waivering.

Both stop being true, even potentially, when he hears the soft ruffle of Jack moving, feels the, by now familiar, burn of his gaze. He wonders distanly if Jack wants to know too. He’s actually surprised he hasn’t asked about the scars yet and he’s not sure if he’d answer with the usual exaggerated lie if he did.

Gabe’s chest rises and falls serenely, heavy. Like every breath is a promise both implied and outright stated. At last he looks over.

The silence vibrates. Jack’s eyes are hard, prideful in that same waivering way they always are, but his mouth is soft and open, eyes bright and hopeful. Gabe wants to reach out, cup his jaw and feel the already beginning morning stubble. He’s always pegged himself a hard man and yet he wants to be soft with Jack, _for_ Jack. 

“We could do something,” 

“We?”

Jack huffs, it’s almost a laugh. “You and I.”

Gabe chuckles, and the tone is hard to place even to his own ears, it’s not bitter or biting.

“I know-” one of Jack’s hands flutters above his chest before he drops both it and his sentence. 

Gabe hums low and encouraging, the softest ‘ _go on_ ’.

“I know we could do something,” he tries, but the words seem to feel awkward in his mouth. He moves, sits up with a crinkle of sheets. His hands move uncertainly again. “I know you think I’m too much sometimes.”

Gabe snorts. “You’re not too bad.”

The air gets light suddenly, Jack chuckles, his shoulders bouncing just once. It’s like they breathe the same way, like they’re synced up somehow. 

The casual softness lingers for a beat, then Jack looks over at him pointedly. “And you’re the same.”

He’s smiling, small and sharp. It’s like being unraveled. Gabe lets a breath spill out, one eyebrow raised slightly. 

Jack’s eyes rake over his face. It isn’t searching, they both know he’s already found what he’s looking for. The blue fire scalds when the eye contact cuts off and Gabe feels the weight of Jack’s gaze trail along his throat.

“Perhaps.”

And Gabe feels it, on a deeper plane, vibrating and resonating - like waves interfering and growing where they cross.

Hunger.

\----

They collide like stars one afternoon when Jack returns from a run once again. He smells like outside, like the winter air is holding tight to his skin - cold and stingy and sharp.

He looks like grace and sin all at once, full of power and wicked ambition, like he could come back every day like that and always have outrun his previous attempts. He spurs the world to wild growth, like a rogue omnic multiplying. 

And it’s like it dislodges something deep inside Gabe. He’s standing before he has the time to think it through.

Jack is looking at him, eyes so terribly blue and the expression … like he’s waiting for something and it all falls away when Gabe closes the space between them.

It’s vibrating all over again. Gabe is back to the first time he saw him, caught in the headlight of Jack’s gaze again but there’s so much more now. The world is null, there is only the ocean of stuff unsaid and implied between them and the storm gray typhoon rising in Jack’s eyes just like it always is.

 _Ruin me, tear it all apart and put it back together_ , he thinks, because Gabe always knew it was easier to breathe after the summer storms and Jack is nothing if not all that new and ancient heat and anger packed into one small thing. 

“I broke my personal best,” Jack mumbles, eyes unwavering and mouth lax. Their chests almost touch, two breaths like one. _You’re the same._ A mirror that’s always pushing for something greater, better. All the wild, untamed want Gabe denies himself too often. That Jack indulges in too willingly.

“Are you sure?” Gabe asks and his tone is the same, distant and low, overly casual when they both know this could become something so much more.

“Yeah,” it’s hardly anything but a rush of breath over his bottom lip.

“They’re strict with this sort of thing.” He’s searching Jack’s face for tells, for any cracks of uncertainty and he finds none. 

“I don’t care.” His eyebrows crinkle, whole face breaking into something horrifically soft. And then his hands are moving with that summer storm inevitability. “I goddamn hope you’re implying the same thing I am.”

And then Jack has strong hands grasped around the back of Gabe’s neck, a thumb caressing the rough hair near the base of his skull. And he tastes like everything and nothing at all when he hunches his shoulders and pulls Gabe in close to kiss him.

There’s nothing - the world is white-hot and vibrating, like his senses are being rewired to take it all in. Jack whimpers like it hurts and Gabe is already raising a hand to cup his cheek, to try and soothe that ache away. 

Jack melts into it, chases Gabe slightly when he pulls back. There’s something like fear flashing over his face. His eyes are blown wide, his lips slightly parted. Gabe keeps his hand against his face, holds him there until Jack looks less nervous.

He’s breathing harshly, but there’s no exertion to any of it. It’s as natural as breathing, simple as straining desperately to get better. 

As impossible to fight as hunger.

They crash together and there’s no hesitation to it. Jack’s hands are strong and steady as they settle on his waist. It’s like dancing when Gabe steps forwards and Jack follows until the back of his legs hit the bed and they go down.

Jack’s hair is soft even when cut this short, there’s enough of it for Gabe to curl his fingers at the back of his neck and hold him. It makes sense, it fits. They fit, almost dangerously, against each other. 

“I’d give you the world,” Jack rasps. His breath disperse hot and eager over Gabe’s neck, there’s already a slight pant to his tone. And yet it’s sharp. Strong and determined like vodka, like waves. It feels appropriate when he feels the point of Jack’s canines dig into his shoulder.

He fists a hand in Jack’s hair, pulls until he has to tilt his chin up with a proud little smirk. Gabriel kisses him soundly just for good measure. “We’re going to rule the world,” he hums against him. “Save it, then rule it.”

Jack is laughing against his mouth, peppering kisses against his lower lip as he rolls until he’s straddling Gabe’s waist. There’s the slightest quirk of his brow, the world’s tiniest _I told you so._

“I’m going to crown you as king.” His eyes blaze, half-lidded and burning with blue fire and life as he sits back, one hand solidly placed at the center of Gabe’s chest.

Gabe tsk’s quietly, hands already roaming over Jack’s thighs, setting the slow pace they grind together with. “I already am.”

“In more than just name I meant.” Jack leans back, exposing the middle of Gabe’s chest to the chill of the evening to lean back on both hands and slowly start working his hips. Gabe breathes out. Shifts his hands to run along Jack’s thigh.

“I’m going to save the world.” Gabe repeats, like a prayer or a promise, like something accursed bathed in reverence.

He never adds the ‘ _for you_ ’.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so, so much for reading!
> 
> I'll also have to extend a huge thank you to a lot of different members of the OW gaymers discord, especially an enormous thank you to rustosaurus for looking the first part over and offering ideas, it was hugely helpful!
> 
> This fic is close to my heart. It's been a while since I've been able to get anything written, so though I think parts of this is a little wonky, it feels amazing to be creating again, and a lot of the ideas and characterizations in this are indeed very dear to me. I was put on this earth primarily to shout about the inherent humor in making Jack's real name as long and complicated as possible
> 
> If you have the time, comments fuel me like nothing else! Thank you so, so much!


End file.
